Texas/New Mexico/Louisiana/Mexico Obs And Discussion Thread Part 8

[Sophisticated Skeptic]

sail-thru ordering now available :

 

[Sophisticated Skeptic]

Denham Springs  I-12

 

 

http://imageshack.com/a/img923/7128/pCE8LG.jpg

 

[jm1220]

Euro had some pretty crazy rain amounts through day 10 throughout most of TX-widespread 5-8" pockets stretching from Mexico NE through the state. 

[jm1220]

More of a general soaking around Austin today than yesterday. 2.1" of rain where I am since midnight, most areas are over 1". A couple of localized spots have over 3". 

[cstrunk]

We've had maybe a couple of tenths at my apartment in Tyler, TX so far this weekend, once again missing out on any of the heavier downpours. Other areas have been more fortunate and we should get a good rain continuing throughout today. Where I work, we have received about 1"-1.5" this weekend near Hallsville, TX.

It is humid outside but it is very nice to have a week of temperatures in the 80's in mid-August in Texas. Glad a lot of places are getting rain as well, luckily nothing like what Louisiana experienced.

[jm1220]

About 4.5" total now where I am in Austin. We should be over 5" by the end of today given the steady light rain and mod/heavy patches around. 

[aggiegeog]

Never made it out of the mid 70s with 73 most of the day in Tyler. Steady light to moderate rain all day. Nice to finally get some rain.

[jm1220]

High was 76 at Camp Mabry today. Was unbelievably refreshing, actually chilly. I think this is a record for lowest high temp for this date, about 20 degrees below normal. 

Event total just shy of 5" where I am. 

[bubba hotep]

Found myself down in Louisiana for the flood, so haven't been paying too much attention to DFW weather the past week. However, the Euro weeklies are solid gold for DFW. Nearly 7" of rain by mid-September and no more 100s. 

[raindancewx]

PDO just came in for July 2016 - down to 1.25 from JISAO. Well below last July. Suspect August will be down again too, given that there is cold water off the US West Coast. I was mapping my coldest winters (ABQ) and warmest winters by SSTA (1981-2010 base) today, and it looks OK for winter, two of the four regions support cold winters right now. Warmth between Iceland/Greenland shows up as an Ocean feature in cold Dec-Feb winters, we have that now. Cold waters on the West Coast support a cold winter too. Borderline La Nina is bad, as is the warmth in the North Central Pacific, but all in all, not terrible looking right now.

The cooler West Coast waters and strong monsoon in AZ make me think at least parts of the SW will have a wet winter too. The drop off in July-Aug temps has been fairly massive too which helps. 

[jm1220]

Flash Flood Warnings out for western Travis, Williamson and Burnet Counties. The Lake Travis area was nailed early this morning-Lakeway has an event total over 10" now. 

[DFWWeather]

15 hours ago, bubba hotep said:

Found myself down in Louisiana for the flood, so haven't been paying too much attention to DFW weather the past week. However, the Euro weeklies are solid gold for DFW. Nearly 7" of rain by mid-September and no more 100s. 

Latest ECMWF weeklies also have first significant frontal passage of the season shortly before or around Labor Day (which I call significant anyhow). Confidence is growing that we shouldn't see anymore 100s. We have another front progged for this weekend, and possibly a 3rd later next week. Highly unusual late August pattern. I like the idea of cooling across the Rockies and Plains to start Fall which may persist into winter. East coast might have a slower start to fall this year.

Interesting, I went over the preliminary analog years that Pastelok posted on Accuweather and what the outcomes were for DFW winter. His analog years are as follows and if it was a cold/neutral/warm winter for DFW:

1958-60 - Cold

1959-60 - Cold

1960-61 - Cold

1974-75 - Neutral

1981-82 - Cold

1983-84 - Cold

1984-85 - Cold

1985-86 - Neutral (though December was cold)

1995-96 - Neutral (through end of January into early February was quite cold with major snow/ice event)

1996-97 - Neutral

2005-06 - Warm (quite warm actually)

2013-14 - Cold

2015-16 - Warm (Not sure why this was included, but I would throw it out as I don't expect anything like last year as SST are already looking quite different.)

If you throw out the 2015-16 winter, you get a cold looking winter for the mid-section of the nation, even colder if you toss 2005-06.

I believe Joe Bastardi's preliminary winter ideas are similar with the middle of the country neutral (could go either way) and warmer along both coasts, but I'm not sure what his analog package looks like. This might be a cold central US winter? Thoughts...

 

[Quixotic1]

I think 14-15 is the analog that was meant instead of 15-16.  

[raindancewx]

Bastardi (this has been posted publicly, so it's OK to share it), had three main analogs for Winter 16-17:

58-59

59-60

93-94

If you map those years the SSTA are damned close to now. But he thought the Atlantic was too cold in those years, so he throws in 2011-12, 2013-14, and 1995-96. He is going to update the winter forecast by the end of this month though. With the weighting he had this:

1958-59 x2

1959-60 x2

1993-94 x2

2011-12 

2013-14

1995-96

This winter is a bit tricky, probably need years with the PDO Neutral and Positive, AMO Neutral and Positive, and ENSO Neutral and Negative to come up with a useful holistic match. I lean towards a cold fall and a slightly cooler than normal winter for the SW at the moment. 

[jm1220]

Flash flood warnings up again for Austin and suburbs. About to go over 7" where I am, and other area totals are 8-10"+. 

[jm1220]

Heavy rain again nailing western Travis/Hays Counties where 8-10"+ of rain has already fallen, and creeks have already been flooding. Hearing thunder outside now, rain is slowly pivoting east again towards downtown. The last few nights have had these bouts of locally heavy rain that have dropped locally 3-5" each night. 

[jm1220]

Today's rain brought me to over 8". A couple of spots just west of town closer to Lake Travis have 12"+. 

[Roy9]

Still lots of flooding in our state (Louisiana)

Just came across this guide put out by 225Magazine, http://help.225batonrouge.com/

Please share! 40k+ LA citizens with homes destroyed and thousands in shelters. I type this as more rain is headed towards us in Baton Rouge :\

[jm1220]

Euro has another 4"+ of rain coming later this weekend especially I-35 and west with locally 7" in the western Hill Country. I think Camp Mabry needs 3.5" or so to make this the wettest August on record. I ended up with about 8.5" from the latest system that is finally gone. 

For LA, rain looks to be lighter, 1-3", but obviously any rain is unwelcome there (or here at this point-some creeks around Austin had flooding at times in the last few days). 

[jm1220]

It's looking like there could be some serious flooding from this area south through San Antonio and west. NWS is projecting up to 15" of rain in spots, which would cause major flooding considering all the rain we've had in the last 4-5 days. The latest models are starting to focus on the Austin area and just south/west. This might become a very dangerous event if we get training heavy rain/storms overnight. 

[jm1220]

10" this month, 1.6" today where I am. Camp Mabry's August all time record is about 9.6", so that's already beaten a few miles south of there. Models are firing the rain back up over I-35 overnight, but for now the main heavy rain axis was shunted pretty far SE by the MCV that came through the area this afternoon. That will have to start to shift back north pretty soon for the models to verify. 

Pretty sure the models are busting on the SE extent of the heavy rain-it's making inroads towards the Corpus Christi area now when most models had SE TX largely dry. If the rain stalls out there instead, I doubt we see much more in the Austin/San Antonio areas-the moisture will all be used up there. 

[Chinook]

I just realized that Dallas-Fort Worth hit 107 on August 12, with dew point of 66 and heat index of 113. That is pretty bad. Or good, if you are in the business of selling air conditioners for a profit. Looks like things have been below normal for a little while.

[raindancewx]

It's apparently fall here in New Mexico, with snow last night at 12,000 feet, and temperatures in the 70s all afternoon in Albuquerque.

[jm1220]

It was pretty much a bust for I-35, as I suspected it would be last night when the boundary was pushed way SE of where models had it by the MCV that rolled through yesterday afternoon. Some places SE of San Antonio did get 6"+ of rain, mainly in low populated areas. 

[Quixotic1]

20 hours ago, Chinook said:

I just realized that Dallas-Fort Worth hit 107 on August 12, with dew point of 66 and heat index of 113. That is pretty bad. Or good, if you are in the business of selling air conditioners for a profit. Looks like things have been below normal for a little while.

107 sounds about right for an annual max.  

[aggiegeog]

11 hours ago, raindancewx said:

It's apparently fall here in New Mexico, with snow last night at 12,000 feet, and temperatures in the 70s all afternoon in Albuquerque.

I was wondering if the peaks would get any snow out of this. I'll have to ask my grandparents if they see any on Jicarita if they are still at their cabin.

[raindancewx]

Any of you have thoughts on a Fall (Sept-Nov) forecast? I don't have a method for analogue-ing Fall, so this is just my guess. I think the rex-block in the Pacific that has had the NW hot lately is semi-permanent for about half the fall, but will get moved by Pacific typhoons eventually. I have AZ and the MW cool, due to monsoonal moisture (it's been quite strong in much of AZ), and I have the +PDO sending cool shots down the middle of the US throughout the Fall. Also think that with cool water off California surrounded by warm water, that storms may intensify to some degree as they come to California, and so Southern California may get a fair amount of rain this fall, particularly after Nov 1.

In the East, I buy into the warm AMO/western Atlantic keeping the warmth in place to mid-October. For New Mexico, I think the wet signal (+PDO) is strong enough to overcome the weak dry signal (weak La Nina at best), especially as the +AMO gets drained of it's influence to some extent by hurricanes cooling the ocean.

I try to put in precip/temp anamoly lines so people can see if they are say, hot/wet v. cold/wet too. 

[lookingnorth]

It's overcast and drizzling here in Norman.

[raindancewx]

Another blazing hot day here in the Southwest, almost got 80F today in Albuquerque. Mean high in August is now down to 86.8F for Albuquerque - huge drop of 8.6F from mean highs in July to mean highs in August so far. From 1892-1930, the biggest drop off in Albuquerque was 7.4F, and from 1931-2015, the biggest drop off was 7.6F. So will be interesting to see how low we will go. Will probably fall back into the mid-50s tonight, assuring tomorrow is fairly cool too.

[jm1220]

Nice towers up this evening east of Austin-towards Bastrop. Radar indicates a small patch of 2" of rain there.